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Out With the Knit, in With the Wine

Akron/Family, surrounded by guests, performed on New
Years Eve at the Knitting Factory, which is leaving
Manhattan for Brooklyn.Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

IT was an especially cacophonous “Auld Lang Syne.” But for the Knitting Factory’s last night in Manhattan, it was appropriate, as the shaggy avant-folk group Akron/Family led a version of that Scottish New Year’s hymn on Wednesday night that mutated from a simple singalong to screeching feedback to a meditative one-note drone.

The Knitting Factory has been celebrating noise and eclecticism ever since it opened on East Houston Street in 1987, and in its earlier days the club gained renown as a defining stage for downtown music, that clamorous and unclassifiable New York amalgam of jazz, punk, art-rock and every kind of experimentation.

But once again an arty Manhattan outpost has become a victim of the neighborhood renewal it helped to foster. The Knitting Factory, which moved to Leonard Street in TriBeCa in 1994, can no longer afford the area’s rising rents and will reopen in May in a considerably smaller and less expensive space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Photo

Surfing the crowd as Deerhoof plays during the Knitting Factorys shows on New Years Eve, the clubs last night in Manhattan. Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

This real-estate drama, however, has a twist: one of the area’s gentrifiers is a stylish new restaurant and performance space opened by Michael Dorf, the founder of the Knitting Factory. New Year’s Eve also served as the debut of City Winery, on Varick Street in the South Village nearby, with a performance by Joan Osborne, and the two concerts could hardly have been more different.

At the Knitting Factory, where the dominant color was, as it has always been, black, a bohemian young audience sweated out the night in sardine closeness, with about a dozen acts performing on three floors. A note slapped above the second-floor bar read simply “PBR can $3.” At the spacious, golden-hued City Winery, Ms. Osborne sang bluesy soft rock in a crimson gown, and the sold-out crowd — many of whom looked as though they could well have been the parents of the Knitting Factory clientele — sat comfortably at tables and ordered from a list of 500 wines.

Mr. Dorf, who ran the Knitting Factory from its opening until he left the company in 2003, has said City Winery is intended for music fans who have outgrown their dive-bar phase and prefer a more elegant night out. There is warm lighting and table seating for 350. Mr. Dorf’s $5 million establishment allows for every step of the winemaking process to occur on the premises, he said, from the crushing of the grapes to fermentation and aging. A membership program gives customers their own barrel in the basement; clients include Lou Reed, a longtime friend to the Knitting Factory.

Photo

Crowds gone at the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa on New Years Eve.Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

Kerianne Flynn, 41, who lives nearby in TriBeCa, said she signed up her husband, James, for a barrel for his birthday.

“There’s really nothing this sophisticated in the city,” Ms. Flynn said, “where you can see live music and have great wine, great food, and be with grown-ups.”

At the Knitting Factory, revelers seemed perfectly happy to be not so grown up, as fan after fan climbed onstage during Akron/Family’s set to get in one last stage dive.

Photo

The crowds coming, going.Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

In recent years some critics have complained that the Knitting Factory’s programming has suffered as it moved further from its experimental origins. But Wednesday’s show was a classic example of the club’s wide-ranging and progressive taste.

Akron/Family, which made its reputation in Brooklyn and whose members are now split between New York and Pennsylvania, headlined an evening with Deerhoof, a sprightly and unpredictable art-pop band from San Francisco; Dirty Projectors, one of the leaders of a renaissance of experimental rock in Brooklyn; and Deer Tick, the nom de plume of the alt-country songwriter John McCauley.

“It’s very much a storied place,” Courtney Harkins, 19, said. “I wanted to see it before it goes away,” she added, pulling a flier from the wall as the club was closing just before 2 a.m., its floor a mush of spilled beer and fallen confetti.

Photo

Michael Dorf amid the wine barrels at his club, City Winery.Credit
Michael Falco for The New York Times

When the Knitting Factory opened in TriBeCa, the area still had remnants of its past as an artist-colonized wasteland. But in recent years the club has sometimes clashed with the upscale new residents and businesses.

“People think they want music and arts and entertainment,” said Morgan Margolis, a longtime employee who was recently named president of the parent company, Knitting Factory Entertainment. “They think that until they buy a $3 million loft and there’s a line of 400 kids outside a rock club downstairs.”

Mr. Margolis, whose father is the actor Mark Margolis (“Requiem for a Dream”), grew up in TriBeCa, and the scene he describes of his childhood home is almost unrecognizable today. “It was empty,” he said. “You could play ball in the streets. It was a great place to grow up.”

Photo

Diners and drinkers on New Years Eve for the opening night of City Winery in TriBeCa, where grapes are fermented on the premises.Credit
Michael Falco for The New York Times

Today, of course, Manhattan rents have forced most of the rock ’n’ roll crowd to Brooklyn, where new clubs sprout up regularly; one, the Bell House, opened in Gowanus in September.

The Knitting Factory itself has also expanded far beyond TriBeCa. In 2000 it opened a sister club in Los Angeles, and two years ago it took over large clubs in Boise, Idaho, and Spokane, Wash., which have lately been providing the company with a large portion of its revenue. Mr. Margolis will be based in Los Angeles; the main business offices of Knitting Factory Entertainment are in Boise.

In Brooklyn, the Knitting Factory is taking over the former Luna Lounge, on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg. The club will have a capacity of around 200, which should remove it from the fierce competition among midsize spaces (the main room in TriBeCa held 400 people), but also move it farther from the spotlight.

Patrons on New Year’s Eve bemoaned the loss of the TriBeCa club but were hardly surprised by its need to move out of Manhattan. Some were already predicting the next relocation.

“The gentrification in Lower Manhattan is happening in Brooklyn now, too,” said Tim Hiles, 31, who came down from Providence, R.I., for the show. “Even though they’re moving to Brooklyn, 10 years later they’ll probably have to move somewhere else.”